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One Size Fits Nobody: Seeking a Steady 4 or a 10

In one store, you’re a Size 4, in another a Size 8, and in another a Size 10 — all without gaining an ounce.

It’s a familiar problem for many women, as standard sizing has never been very standard, ever since custom clothing gave way to ready-to-wear.

So, baffled women carry armfuls of the same garment in different sizes into the dressing room. They order several sizes of the same shirt online, just to get the right fit.

Now, a handful of companies are tackling the problem of sizes that are unreliable. Some are pushing more informative labels. Some are designing multiple versions of a garment to fit different body shapes. And one is offering full-body scans at shopping malls, telling a shopper what sizes she should try among the various brands.

“For the consumer to go out and navigate which one do I match with is a huge challenge, and causes frustration and returns,” said Tanya Shaw, an entrepreneur working on a fit system. “So many women tie their self-esteem to the size on the tag.”

As the American population has grown more diverse, sizes have become even less reliable. Over the years, many brands have changed measurements so that a woman who previously wore a 12 can now wear a 10 or an 8, a practice known as “vanity sizing.”

In men’s clothes, the dimensions are usually stated in inches; women’s clothing involves more guesswork.

Take a woman with a 27-inch waist. In Marc Jacobs’s high-end line, she is between an 8 and a 10. At Chico’s, she is a triple 0. And that does not consider whether the garment fits in the hips and bust. (Let’s not get into length; there is a reason most neighborhood dry cleaners also offer tailoring.)

Ms. Shaw, the entrepreneur, is chief executive of a company called MyBestFit that addresses the problem. It is setting up kiosks in malls to offer a free 20-second full-body scan — a lot like the airport, minus the pat-down alternative that T.S.A. agents offer.

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In foreground, Liz Reviello and her daughter Alyssa use the results of the body scanner from MyBestFit to find the right size.Credit
Laura Pedrick for The New York Times

Lauren VanBrackle, 20, a student in Philadelphia, tried MyBestFit when she was shopping last weekend.

“I can be anywhere from a 0 at Ann Taylor to a 6 at American Eagle,” she said. “It obviously makes it difficult to shop.” This time, the scanner suggested that at American Eagle, she should try a 4 in one style and a 6 in another. Ms. VanBrackle said she tried the jeans on and was impressed: “That machine, in a 30-second scan, it tells you what to do.”

The customer steps into a circular booth, fully dressed. A wand rotates around her, emitting low-power radio waves that record about 200,000 body measurements, figuring out things like thigh circumference.

Next, the system matches the customer’s measurements to clothes in its database. MyBestFit currently measures clothes from about 50 stores, including Old Navy, Eddie Bauer and Talbots.

Customers then receive a printout of the sizes at each store that ought to fit the customer best. The retailers pay a fee when they appear in the results, but they cannot pay to be included in the results; the rankings are based solely on fit. (The company saves the data, with ID numbers but not names, and may give aggregate information to retailers as feedback.)

Don Thomas, who manages the Eddie Bauer store at the King of Prussia Mall outside Philadelphia, said the system was helpful to shoppers. “Nine times out of 10, if left on their own, they will choose the wrong size pant,” he said. With a printout, “if it says they’re a 4 or a 6, they’re a 4 or a 6, generally. So it’s really good for the customer who’s time-starved, which we all are.”

The scanners are a modern solution to an old problem. Studying dress sizes in Vogue advertisements from 1922 on, Alaina Zulli, a designer focusing on costume history, found clothing sizes have been irregular for decades.

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Vharie Carter, left, shows Liz Reviello of Scranton, Pa., how to position herself in a body scanner.Credit
Laura Pedrick for The New York Times

A woman with a 32-inch bust would have worn a Size 14 in Sears’s 1937 catalog. By 1967, she would have worn an 8, Ms. Zulli found.

Today, she would wear a zero.

Plenty of people have tried to address these arbitrary sizes. Advocating a labeling system called Fitlogic over the last few years, an entrepreneur, Cricket Lee, discovered just how difficult it is to change manufacturers’ approach to size.

Her labeling system divides women’s bodies into three shapes, straight, hourglass or bottom-heavy, and a Fitlogic label carries both the standard size and the shape.

Ms. Lee did tests in the mid-2000s with manufacturers like Jones Apparel and retailers like Nordstrom. But retailers said consumers had trouble grasping the concept. “The manufacturers were so afraid of producing more than one fit in the very beginning,” she said.

Still, she said, she will soon try to sell the sizing system again.

Some brands are taking their own approaches to make the fitting room less demoralizing. Mary Alderete, vice president for women’s global marketing at Levi’s, said, “When we try on 10 pairs of jeans to buy one, the reason you feel bad is because you think something’s wrong with you.”

Last fall, the company introduced Curve ID, a line that offers three styles, depending on how rounded a woman’s backside is — slight, demi and bold. (Levi’s is now testing a fourth style, called supreme curve.) Each of the three styles includes about 29 fits and colors, and dozens of sizes. Ms. Alderete said the company had sold more than one million pairs of the Curve jeans.

Marie-Eve Faust, the program director of fashion merchandising at Philadelphia University, called the Levi’s effort “a good start.”

“The next step is to have the major players sit together, manufacturers, retailers, brands, and say ‘This type of label should be appropriate for all of us. Let’s standardize,’ ” she said.

Dr. Faust said she had been discussing a new kind of label that takes into account the wearer’s shape, but expected retailers to bristle.

Still, Dr. Faust said, change is needed.

“It would be nice just to take the pant, look at the label and say, ‘That should fit me,’ ” she said.

A version of this article appears in print on April 25, 2011, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: One Size Fits Nobody: Seeking a Steady 4 or a 10. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe